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Feb 10, 2015

Top Plate, Nutstrips, and Caster Parts

Ripstik: slowly and steadily coming together!

The shiny blue shim steel I'm using for the top plates (aesthetic purposes) is really thin (0.03"), so it was sandwiched between sacrificial plywood and 1/8" 6061 aluminum to make sure it didn't warp while waterjetting,

In addition to that, I'm milling angles on my tube cutouts so that they properly attach to the bent chassis.

The top plates will attach to the chassis with nutstrips, pieces of 0.5" square extrusion with 1/4-20 tapped holes every inch. Marking and powertapping all these holes took a while.

Here I'm testing a quick caster-lock idea. A caster consists of an upper half and a lower half, with a common pivot shaft (1). If I have a slab that can slide through slots in both halves, I can lock and unlock the caster.

Once convinced that my lock idea would pan out, I proceeded to make all the parts.

Milling the angle blocks to 21.5°. These blocks connect the caster assemblies to the chassis.